Sunday, March 31, 2013

the path to eagle

There was a time, not too long ago, where my response to some event would be "oh, I can blog about that." But so rarely now does that happen.

Holy Week and the celebration of the Triduum awakened some of that.  It is so full of imagery and just good "stuff".  

Another stepping stone occurred this weekend, too, that I would wish to document (and which the teen subject would probably be OK with).

It's been a long process to get to this point, but his Eagle project was completed this weekend.  Other things remain before he can submit his application, but the project is DONE! 

Planning began in earnest about a year ago.  He had seen a stepping stone Rosary and when the time was right he approached the principal at the school he attended for grades K-8 about doing such a project for the school.  They were willing, and so he began work on a proposal, submitted it for all of the signatures and had it approved last summer.  At some point, we were told that there were other plans for the area that he wanted to use for the project, and they were unable to find another suitable chunk of real estate.  They suggested painting a Rosary under a covered area that they have.  Since this was a major change in the project, he was required to do another proposal and submit it.  This happened during the fall.

Then wrestling season began.  If you have wrestlers, you know that nothing else happens during wrestling season (November - February, more or less).  Then he got a job.  I have been forbidden to post that picture on the internet.

A few weekends ago, we bought the supplies.  Last week we were out of school, but the "project beneficiary" was not until Friday, so we (he) made final plans and decided the project would take place on Friday and Saturday.

Friday morning, a small crew - his brother and a good friend - prepared the surface..








 And then they waited...and waited.  We made a run to WalMart for donuts and cookies.  And waited.  Finally, they decided it was "dry enough" and began to lay out the pattern, tracing each bead with chalk.






This process took quite a while, because you know that even though it had been carefully measured and drawn, things did not fit exactly.  So there were changes and decisions to be made along the way.


 Finally, it was time for a trial run with the paint...


They mixed in some gold paint sprinkles...thinking that a little glitter would be a cool thing.  That was pretty much a fail.  Even though we used more than it called for, there was no sparkly glitter effect when we finished.


They painted the "Our Father" beads, and that was a learning experience.  The first one had paint that had oozed under then stencil and then they got paint on the asphalt when they put the stencil down after peeling it off of the circle.  But, they figured out how to fix both of these problems. They cleaned up and went home.

Saturday morning a larger crew showed up.  He had worried about having too many "little kids" that would be careless with a paint roller, but in the end the six that showed up, were perfect.  It was amazing how much debris collected on the covered surface overnight.


I love the picture below - of my Eagle-to-be giving instructions.


Then, working in pairs of one older and one younger, the painting commenced.  It went perfectly.  No drips, no spill, no runs...



What to put as the "connector" on the Rosary had been a problem that he needed to figure out.  In the end, he chose the school logo and made the stencil himself.


For the Cross, he just elected to free-hand it with the roller, and again, it worked quite well.


 A Scout is clean, you know....and paint is messy, so here is the clean-up.


I love this picture, here, too, where he seems to be offering it up to the good God.  Actually, he was looking at the paint he'd gotten all over his hands after taking off one of the paint rollers...



And a final picture of the crew, with the project.  


He is so proud.  Just now, he saw me looking at the pictures to put on here, and he had to stop and look through them again.  "Yeah, I did that," he said.  "Mom, do you think we could go by there tomorrow....just to get another good look at it with it all dry?"